Keynote

Finding Value in Analytics for Power, Charles Soothill

The power industry has changed substantially, in recent years, worldwide. It will continue to change to bring power to the millions around the world who lack it, while making progress towards climate goals. The power industry has a massive opportunity. Electricity continues to be the energy carrier for growth and even in a world focused on energy efficiency and reduced emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere. Electricity stands to be in ever greater demand for everything we do now, including the growth of IT systems, as well as Mobility and Heating and Cooling. Mobility alone is expected to substantially increase the demand for electricity generation.

But the challenges we face are tremendous. On the one hand the increase of Wind and Solar generation has seen a spectacular growth. It has also brought substantial and intermittent new generation capacity online. This displaces the other generators but does not replace them for the times when they are still required. The new highly cyclic operation of all plants in the system demands a new integrity of understanding of the capability of each piece of equipment. The owner needs to know what it can or cannot deliver in the next minutes. We need to create an insensitivity of the equipment to the new duty to accept what in the past would have been intolerable. At the same time we must reduce the real operating cost to our customers so that they can stay in business in an uncertain world.

What the Power Equipment industry expects from the analytical community is complex. Of course they evolve as your own ideas and insights are taken up and understood. This is true in our industry and as well as every industry that is represented in NAFEMS. We expect useable tools that can improve our understanding of the steady state by fractions of a percent. We also want to routinely integrate an optimisation of the whole operating cycle, as modelled and as measured in service. The flow of data from the operations must be managed. Everyone in the value chain, materials scientist, design engineer, plant operator, service planning team and manufacturing engineer should not only use the data flow but be led by it.

The presentation will show by examples how working together the analytical community can share in both the challenge and the excitement we all face.

Speaker

Charles Soothill - Senior Vice President of Technology and Chief Technical Officer at GE Power

Biography

Charles Soothill is the Senior Vice President of Technology and CTO of GE Power, responsible for leadership in innovation, R&D and related processes, and communities for the development and implementation of technologies and products. His work supports GEs short and long term business success. For eight years he has been responsible for GE Power’s R&D program portfolio and its expansion to grow the product range. He also leads the Future Technology Program linked to long term strategy. The future technology programme includes new materials, processes and components for application across the diverse power generation field.